Soapy

I'm getting ready to make more soap for fall shows.  It doesn't happen overnight, and I'm home on the farm for a few short weeks.  I still like to make soap.  It still seems like magic to me.  I met a woman at the Hamilton market who told me she uses melt and pour.  I will never do that.  There's no magic in it.  I love to watch the oils change into soap as I pour the lye in.  I doubt if they melt silk fibers into the lye solution for added protein.   I'm looking forward to using Fancy's goat milk in my soap, that is, if I can get her to let me have some.  Fancy is not cooperating.  I bought her some sweet feed at the mill, but that does not seem to help her.  After months of massaging around her udder and touching her teats, Fancy won't let me anywhere near them.  She is saving her milk for her own babies.  That's all well and good but I want some too.  I'm hoping we can get the shearing/milking stand out of the pile in the back and put together this long weekend.  It may be the Fourth of July, but the farm never stops.  

Annie brought me a collection of beautiful artsy batiks to wrap my upcoming batches in.  Marsden's in Portland has a vast array of batik cottons rivalling anything I've found around here.  Annie also brought me several skeins of beautiful Mother Fiber (because wool is the mother of all fibers) spun into skeins for me to take to the farmer's market.  I can't wait to show them off - that is, if this weather takes a turn for the better.  It's been misty, gray and damp all day here.  Rain is forecast for the entire week.  Flooding is all around us.  I imagine the Delaware, south of Easton, where I lived before moving here, is way above flood stage.  Thank goodness for high ground.